Haven't had internet all this week, so been slow on the pictures... Here we go! I tried to pick a collection across the teams.

There were 26 teams registered this year, 22 of which showed up to competition and I believe 17 of which had successful flights (two teams had ground troubles and would have otherwise flown). Of the 17 flying teams, I personally saw several autonomous takeoffs and landings and most teams flew on autopilot for a significant portion of the flight. It seemed more teams flew still imagery rather than video, though it still surprised me how many teams did not have in-flight transmission of the imagery. WIFI was quite common, especially the Ubiquity hardware. Several teams were flying 72 MHz, though it seemed most were on 2.4 GHz (some despite the 2.4 WIFI) and several were flown through their comm links. The aircraft themselves were perhaps the most conservative across the field we've had. There was a lone quad-rotor representing rotary wings and one canard (which flew quite well I might add). Many teams flew trainer-style Telemasters/Kadets/Rascals, though the foam and/or composite molded aircraft were popular as well. Sizes ranged from about 4 lb up to 55.0 lb (their quote, heh). There were some crashes on Saturday, but Friday was remarkably a clean day and shows the caliber and professionalism of the teams.

Drumroll please...
The overall winner was Utah State University FOSAM, with a near sweep of the categories. Their flight was fully autonomous: one mouse-click to put it in flying mode and one mouse click to select the landing mode. The in-flight imagery system was second to none, with onboard automatic target recognition and three imagery operator stations on the ground. Utah won two years ago as well, making them the first two-time winner.

Second place was North Carolina State University, the only team to find all five targets and figure out the acronym A-U-V-S-I. They also did an autonomous takeoff, but didn't quite pull off the auto-landing. Their flight was fully autonomous except for the last 3 feet before touchdown. NC State was the overall winner last year and is the only team to have competed in all nine years of the competition.

I missed writing down the rest of the placing, so could someone please post those (Hillar??).

Congrats to all the students and all the event staff & organizers. I hope to see everyone again next year!
Dan

PS: If you'd like a full-resolution version of any of the pictures, just PM me.

2011 AUVSI UAS results - unofficial list

Here is the unofficial list, ranked from first to last place.

1- Utah State University FOSAM
2- North Carolina State University
3- Sherbrooke University (Canada)
4- United States Air Force Academy
5- California State at Northridge
6- University of California at San Diego
7- Delhi Technical University (India)
8- Kansas State University
9- University of Arizona
10- M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology (India)
11- Utah States University ROSAM
12- Cornell University
13- Virginia Commonwealth University
14- Mississippi State University
15- Bucknell University
16- Embry Riddle Aeronautical University
17- Florida International University
18- Great Mills High School
19- Rutgers University
20- University of Texas at Austin
21- University of Texas at Arlington
22- Wentworth Institute of Technology
N/A - University of California at Los Angeles
N/A- Illinois Institute of Technology
N/A- Hampton Roads Area High School
N/A- Cal State Poly Pomona

I'll make a quick mention of some of the autopilots used in the event this year. Overall I saw an increased number of Paparazzi users and ArduPilot Mega.

At least 3 universities including 1st place winners Utah FOSAM team used Paparazzi. Several Piccolo users, NC State and the Air Force Academy amongs them. There where a few kestrels (can't remember the teams). Several teams with MicroPilot including Florida International University. At least 3 teams with ArduMega: Bucknell University, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology.

There where no teams this years that I am aware off that used Attopilot, Unav or FeiYu Tech.

I know the UCSD team uses kestrel (im a mech eng student at UCSD). I'm hoping to make another team for next year that would use paparazzi based autopilot but that will mainly depend on how many CS and ECE students I can rangle.

The University of AZ airframe is pretty cool looking. It pulls together a number of interesting design choices that seem to work well together ... and it looks like they might have spent a bit of time drawing it up on a computer and making molds. It definitely stands out next to many of the other franken-trainer type airframes (no disrespect, I've built a few of those myself.) ;-) Does anyone have any more pictures or details? I tried to google a bit to see if I could find more info, but didn't turn up too much on it.

Closon- This is what I remember from talking to some of the team members. Yes, UAZ did make their own molds and had them machine. The entire airframe is composite, although I am not sure of the material selection. The camera mount only pans and uses 2 cameras angled to get 140* view of the ground regardless of plane roll (within operational limits of course). Images from the cameras have a 5* overlap. Their vision recognition software runs of an 8 tower cluster.

Narwhal- I do not think this year any teams did, at least none that I talked to. Last year there were a few teams who did use their own autopilots.

Clolson,
You are correct, the team has a full CAD model in Solidworks of the vehicle, a very nice presentation for their senior design. They did all the composite layup themselves from molds they had cut by an alumni in town. The plane is very pretty in person.

Mecha,
The Camera was supposed to also tilt, did they disable the tilt function?

AntonK - I am not sure, I never saw the gimbal up close. I do remember them saying it only pan.

I saw their images from the camera after the flight and they all had some sort of wave like distortion. The image guy was not sure what was causing it, someone in the team mentioned it could have been servo jitter, so perhaps they did disable the tilt function in order to minimize this problem.